Anti-racist group rallies against alleged white supremacists in Vancouver

Protesters rally outside Vancouver Provincial Court against three men who allegedly set a Filipino man on fire while he slept outside on a couch near Commercial Drive.Photo by
Glen Baglo

A small group of anti-racist protesters demonstrated outside Vancouver Provincial Court on Monday drawing attention to a court case involving alleged members of a hate group.

Robertson Conley Trimble de Chazal, 25, and Alastair Michaelson Miller, 20, had their next court dates set for March 19 and April 2, respectively.

They are facing assault charges for an alleged incident in which a Filipino man was set on fire as he lay on an abandoned couch on Commercial Drive in September 2009.

An anti-racism group has identified de Chazal and Miller as members of the international white supremacist group Blood and Honour.

“We would like this group to be dissolved,” protester Krystle Alarcon told The Province.

“We would like [de Chazal and Miller] to be convicted for assaulting people of colour in Vancouver, and we would like to see racism in general stop,” said Alarcon, a member of the Philippine Women’s Centre.

“We see that assault [of the Filipino man on the couch] as a racist act.”

Alarcon said she was disappointed that it has taken three years for the men’s case to get this far. No trial date has been set.

The Indigenous Action Movement supported Alarcon’s group at the protest.

Const. Terry Wilson of the B.C. Hate Crime Team declined to comment on the case, saying he is expecting to be called as a witness.

Last December, Wilson said his team had disrupted Blood and Honour.

“Through the course of these investigations, we’ve been disruptive in that organization and its membership has dwindled,” Wilson told reporters at a press conference called to draw attention to racist groups operating in B.C.

Blood and Honour was formed in the 1980s and has chapters in Europe and North America.

The Canadian chapter, according to its website, classifies itself as a “nationalist organization and European cultural group operating independently of any political party.”

It aims to secure “the future of our European cultural identity under one common banner.”

Anyone who has information about crime motivated by hate can contact the B.C. Hate Crime Team at 604-543-4903 or 604-598-4243, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

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